Sierra Space Teams with Honda and Tec-Masters to Advance Energy Solutions in Space

Collaboration Will Support Testing of Honda’s Water Electrolysis System on the International Space Station (ISS)

Project to Enable Honda’s Development of a Regenerative Fuel Cell System for Production of Oxygen, Hydrogen and Electricity on the Moon

LOUISVILLE, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sierra Space, a leading commercial space company and defense tech prime that is Building a Platform in Space to Benefit Life on Earth^®, announced today a groundbreaking collaboration with Honda and Tec-Masters to test Honda’s high-differential pressure water electrolysis system aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The project, facilitated by Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser^® spaceplane, marks a significant step toward enabling sustainable human life on the lunar surface and advancing clean energy solutions for both space and Earth.

Honda is leveraging decades of hydrogen fuel cell technology expertise to develop a regenerative fuel cell system, known as a circulative renewable energy system, that will continuously produce oxygen, hydrogen, and electricity. A key component of this is Honda’s high-differential pressure water electrolysis system; testing it on board the space station will verify the system’s efficiency and reliability in microgravity. Honda’s renewable fuel cell system is part of the company’s vision to provide advanced energy storage capable of supporting human life on the lunar surface. Watch a video about the Honda regenerative fuel cell system here.

Sierra Space will be the mission manager for Honda, working with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) and NASA to transport materials aboard Dream Chaser to the space station. Tec-Masters, Inc., will be the technical payload integrator, providing its decades of experience in ISS payload integration and certification. Sierra Space recognizes the potential of this technology to revolutionize energy storage and utilization, not just in space but also as a scalable, renewable solution on Earth.

“The future of innovation in space is not only commercialization, but teaming arrangements between like-minded companies to advance technology we never thought imaginable in previous decades,” said Ken Shields, Sr. Director of Business Development at Sierra Space. “As we prepare for our first Dream Chaser mission to the International Space Station, this new collaboration with Honda and Tec-Masters is an additional proof point to the varied applications of our spaceplane to provide commercial transport to the space station and beyond.”

Dream Chaser, the world’s only commercial spaceplane, is uniquely suited for this Honda program due to both its ample cargo capacity (more than 6+ tons) and its capability to safely return critical payloads to Earth at fewer than 1.5g’s on commercial runways. This ensures the preservation of invaluable cargo upon return.

Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser spaceplane, Tenacity, is currently undergoing final testing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in preparation for its first mission to the ISS under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Service 2 (CRS-2) contract.

About Sierra Space

Sierra Space is a leading commercial space company at the forefront of innovation and the commercialization of space in the Orbital Age^®, building an end-to-end business and technology platform in space to benefit life on Earth. With more than 30 years and 500 missions of space flight heritage, the company is reinventing both space transportation with Dream Chaser^®, the world’s only commercial spaceplane, and the future of space destinations with the company’s inflatable and expandable space station technology. Using commercial business models, the company is also delivering orbital services to commercial, DoD and national security organizations, expanding production capacity to meet the needs of constellation programs. In addition, Sierra Space builds a host of systems and subsystems across solar power, mechanics and motion control, environmental control, life support, propulsion and thermal control, offering myriad space-as-a-service solutions for the new space economy.